[Frameworks] new critical studies film course in car culture

[David Baker]

Powerful automobile related imaginings occurred in the early sixties
beginning with Disney's flying car flubber apotheosis in The Absent  
Minded Professor (1961)
  followed by the anthropomorphic VW Herbie films beginning in 1963  
including The Love Bug (1968).
  If you will allow television episodes, the 1965 single season sitcom
"My Mother The Car" in which a man's mother is reincarnated as a 1928  
Porter Touring Car
might be considered.
The seriality in Andy Warhol's  "Car Crash Paintings" of 1963 might be  
thought of filmically.
The first appearance of the Munster's Koach in the television sitcom
The Munsters (1964-66) was a marvel merging hot rod hybridity and  
familial functionality,
Grandpa Munster's vehicle
called the Drag-u-la, from the episode called Hot Rod Herman was  
essentially a super charged coffin
on wheels,it also appeared in the 1966 film
Munster Go Home.

A precursor to the Munster Koach might be found in an uproarious
1934 episode of The Little Rascals
called "Hi' Neighbor" in which Spanky and his gang build a mad ad hoc  
fire truck
to meet the challenge of an affluent newcomer's girlfriend wooing toy  
car.

Not of the imagination but still interesting is a short film document  
on Youtube and elsewhere
of the first Indy 500 race, May 30,1911
complete with a "spectacular accident".

The ecstatic (neon-lit?) cruising footage from Floyd Mutrux's Dusty  
and Sweets McGee (1971)
photographed by William A. Fraker
which is said to have influenced George Lucas's American Graffiti is a
personal favorite.

I can't fail to mention Kathryn Bigelow's The Loveless
and the unforgettable RV roving vampires in her Near Dark.

The car race in Rebel Without A Cause comes to mind.

I recollect a video Fred Worden exhibited at Anthology several years  
ago bound entirely
by travel in a moving automobile on a Thruway (the title escapes me).

Ernie Gehr's Auto-collider series.
(Additionally Ernie's digital interlaced masterpiece Crystal Palace  
(2002) was shot from the open
window of a moving car.)

Then there is Michael Bay's Transformers (2007) which I have not seen
but understand involves  four wheeled transformational entities.

-DB

On Dec 14, 2012, at 2:57 PM, Bryan Konefsky wrote:

>
> Hello Frameworkers - I am in the early moments of developing a  
> critical studies course that looks at different ways the automobile  
> has been imagined in cinema.  To this end I'd love to hear from  
> ya'll with titles of films that you think might be useful to explore/ 
> expand this idea and readings that might also dovetail themes that  
> might be explored.
>
> Do know that my pal Antoni Pinent recently turned me on to a great  
> text titled Car Fetish.
>
> OK, let's hear what ya got!
> best,
> -- 
> Bryan Konefsky
> director, Experiments in Cinema
> el presidente, Basement Films
> lecturer, Dept of Cinematic Arts UNM
> visiting lecturer, UCSC
> board of advisors, Ann Arbor Film Festival
> _______________________________________________
> FrameWorks mailing list
> FrameWorks at jonasmekasfilms.com
> https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks